The finale

After 5 weeks of exploring, sightseeing, and enjoying Eastern & Mediterranean Europe/Africa. I am happy and excited to be back in Dallas. It's great to explore the world and then realize and appreciate being back home. I guess that feeling is especially strong now that it's July 4. God Bless America. In the 5 weeks of my trip I visited 9 countries and 13 different cities and knocked many sights off my bucket list. And while I am always excited about my next trip, at this point I'm excited about being home and finding ways to grow, learn, and give here in Texas.

For those of you that have asked me to write another photoblog, I hope you've enjoyed the journey as much as I enjoyed writing about it. I love sharing stories and memories from my adventures and am honored that anyone wants to share them with me. Much love to you all!

Frankfurt

I flew out of Frankfurt, Germany on my last day of the trip so I spent a night in the city. Frankfut is one of the financial centers of Europe and contains the European Central Bank. I spent the night enjoying the local ale at a beer hall - a sweet, cider beer. I then went to the top of the Main Tower and ate dinner - one of the tallest buildings in the cities.

Auschwitz II - Birkenau

The Birkenau camp was the camp most publicized in Schindler's List. This was the primary death camp where an estimated 1.8 million Jews were ruthlessly killed in gas chambers. In a highly organized and systematic way, Jews from all over Europe arrived via trains into Birkenau. Woman and children were separated from men and taken to the women's side of the camp. Men were then separated into the following groups "able to work" or "not able to work", which was based off mere observation. Those not able to work were then marched down a path where they were told they would take a shower. They were lead into a changing area where they were told to undress and hang their clothes on hooks with numbers - they were told to remember the number where their clothes were hung. They then walked themselves into the shower room where they were gased. It took approximately 20 minutes to kill a group of up to 5,000 people.

The majority of the camp still remains with only a few bunks being destroyed. The crematorium remains still exist, although they destroyed 4 days before the camp was liberated by Russian forces.

Auschwitz I

The Auschwitz concentration camp is made up of 3 separate camps all within about a half mile from each other. The first Auschwitz camp started as a camp primarily focused on political prisoners and contained the adminstrative headquarters, a "hospital", torture chambers, as well as a small crematorium. It also contained the home of Rudolph Hess, who was the leader and visionary behind many of the key operations of Auschwitz. It also contained the site where Hess was hung after the Nazi war crimes trials.

Auschwitz I also contained displays of the items Nazi's took from the prisoners of victims of the Holocaust. Items like eyeglasses, shaving cream containers, prostethics, clothes, and luggage were taken and the utilized for other purposes. The items in the displays were reamaining from when Auschwitz was liberated.

Oskar Schindler Museum

One of the more interesting sites I took in was the City Museum of Krakow located at the enamel factor owned by Oskar Schindler. This factory, which was the subject of Spielberg's movie, was the home to almost 1100 Jews during the Holocaust. And while I'd like to believe Schindler hired the Jews out of a desire to fight back against the government, the museum highlighted that it was mostly done because the Jews provided a quality labor force that was extremely cheap. By the 1940's, Schindler had gained a reputation in Germany as willing to make a buck in any way possible.

While Schindler's life was a major focus of the museum, it also told the story of life in Krakow during the Nazi occupation during WWII, including the renaming of the city square to Adolf Hitler Platz.

Krakow Town Square

The town square contained a bustling tourist crowd that enjoyed one of the many restraunts/bars as well as live music on the weekends. Poland was one of the hosts of the Euro Cup so you could feel the excitement around the city.

Poland - Krakow and Auschwitz

To end the trip, I took a few days to visit Poland and Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp. Krakow is Poland's most historic city and contains a large castle district, a crowded town square, as well as a progressive and quiant Jewish District. Auschwitz was and hour long bus trip from Krakow and was one of the highlights of the trip.

Old Town Square

In the heart of Prague is the old town square. Adorning the square are several restraunt patios, bars, and a large baroque and gothic church. The square was also the headquarters of a large watch party during the Euro Cup.

Castle Hill

On the west side of the city sits Prague's Castle Hill. This is the site of the Czech Republic's political offices and executive residence as well as the city's largest and most beautiful cathedrals. During our visit inside the castle walls we witnessed and executive procession lead by the Bohemian national band, the singing of the national anthem, as well as many couples taking their wedding photos.

Prague

As advertised, Prague was an extremely fun city to visit. Beautiful medieval architecture, fascinating modern history, and beer halls and sausage made the visit here unique and entertaining. Additionally, the start of the Euro Cup made our visit that much better.

Stockholm Marathon

While I stayed bundled up in a coat, stocking cap, and umbrella, these runners powered through to finish the Stockholm Marathon that took place the same weekend we visited. Much respect.

High School Graduation

Our visit to Stockholm also took place around the same time high school students were graduating. To celebrate graduation, Swedish students rent out dump trucks and parade around the city singing songs and shooting water guns in celebration. It was slightly cooler than my Project Graduation at the local YMCA.

Ice Bar

On a lighter note, Karl and I decided to visit the Smirnov IceBar during our stay. This gimmicky, yet unique bar is made entirely of ice and kept at a cool 28 degrees. Groups of around 20-30 enter the bar for up to 45 minutes and enjoy a slew of cold beverages (out of glasses made of ice, of course). To aid the journey, each guest is given a loaner coat and set of gloves to help make it through. However, living in Dallas has made our blood a little thin so we only made it for 30 minutes.  

Nobel Museum

The Nobel peace prize was started and funded through an endowment of Alfred Nobel. He was a successful entrepreneur and industrialist that had a knack for finding new and creative ways to improve his company's operations. Upon his death, he wrote a memo along with a large endowment that still guides the trustees on how to give the award each year. His goal was to begin finding rewards for those people that are improving the lives of people across the globe, specifically, in the areas of medicine, chemistry, physics, literature, economics, and peace.  As we all know, this award is one of the most prestigious awards in the world and its alumni boast some of the greatest accomplishments in the past 100 years.

Old Town

Old town contained the Swedish parliament and executive offices, which were actually being visited by Hillary Clinton when we were there. Unfortunately, Hillary couldn’t join us for any of our sightseeing. Below is a photo of the Swedish Parliament in Old Town.

Stockholm

Stockholm is a beautiful city that consists of a series of islands separated by inlets from the Baltic Sea. It’s an extremely progressive city that contains a strong and robust economy as well as numerous academic institutions. It’s also one of the most expensive cities I’ve ever visited. The pint of beer index was priced at an average of $12. Additionally, it contained an Old Town area where the main political buildings were located as well as a multitude of small, cobble-stoned streets that were filled with tourists and business travelers. Unfortunately, much of our trip to Sweden was accompanied by cold weather and rainstorms. However, we made the best of it and gave our umbrellas plenty of work.

The Communist Musuems and Statue Park

In in the late 90’s, a group of political and academics in Hungary decided to open a Communist history park in the outskirts on Budapest. The highlight of the park is a group of 20 statues that used to adorn the city and glorified the ideals of communism as well as some of its intellectual founders, Lenin and Marx. I also visited the Terror Museum in downtown Pest. This museum highlighted the ways the Secret police kept tabs on the citizens of Budapest and was located at the old secret police headquarters.

Eerie places indeed.

Jewish District

The Jewish Diestrict and Synagogue in Budapest has an interesting and unusual history. During WWII, several thousands of jews were maintained in the Budapest ghetto  in the Jewish District outside of the synagogue. Many people became sick and died due to the unsanitary conditions. The photo of the courtyard below contains tombstones of many of the Hungarian Jews that died during the Holocaust and in the Budapest Ghetto.

Since there were so many prisoners of war, the synagogue wasn’t bombed. With this natural protection in store Nazi soldiers used the 2^nd floor as a communications center. The synagogue remains the largest synagogue in the world in terms of square footage.